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How does architecture impact our lives?

To celebrate World Architecture Day, Senior Lecturer Michael Muir and a group of our students told us about their favourite buildings, design heroes and what architecture means to them.

We spoke to a range of students from first years in the Bachelor of Design in Architecture and second and third years from the Bachelor of Architecture and Environments, to Masters students preparing to launch their careers as architects. We wanted to find out: what impact does architecture have on our lives, what attracts people to this career path and who are some of the iconic designers influencing our school right now?

Watch the video: World Architecture Day

I’m very glad you’ve asked me about my favourite building in the world because… Well recently, we’ve set up a new studio with the second year students which is a humanitarian-based studio and we had a whole bunch of precedents of buildings that really pointed to new directions over the last 100 years in housing.

Michael Muir, Senior Lecturer

"One of those precedents is a house by a guy named Rudolf Schindler who was an architect in Los Angeles. He was of Viennese background and worked for Frank Lloyd Wright for a bit, and then went on to develop his own way of design in LA."

"I have actually been to the building and it’s an amazing house. It sort of shakes the whole preconception of what a house might be. It was for two families, built of very unusual materials, with an amazing calmness in it."

"It’s quite a unique house, with a fabulous relationship between the inside and the outside: sleeping outside in what he called ‘nests’, these little open pavilions on the second story. He and his wife lived together there with their daughter and another family, and there was also a little place for guests. All in this quite tiny house."

"Many of our students have grown up in apartments, particularly a lot of our international students. And many others have grown up in suburbia, where houses can be a bit ordinary. Such a house really makes both the teachers and the students think about what’s the essence of living. So, that’s the one for this semester, there’ll be a new favourite one next week but that’s where we are so far."

Favourite architects?

"Pierre Koenig. He was a mid-century architect in Los Angeles. He was a modernist architect and had really precise elements to his architecture: glass, steel and brick were his forte.

He designed one of the most iconic houses, Case Study House #22, which was also known as ‘the famous house where no one famous has ever lived’. It was really sleek architecture, with simple geometry. It’s in the Hollywood Hills, if you ever get the chance you should go visit. He’s really underrated and that’s one reason I like him."

- BAE student

My favourite architect would have to be Zaha Hadid.

– Madison Macheske

I’m really liking Casey Brown Architecture’s work at the moment, here in Australia.

- Taya Brooks

I would say I really like Lina Bo Bardi at the moment.

– Yvette Ramsay

All Master of Architecture students.

Why do you want to be an architect?

"One thing I love about architecture is you can constantly study outside the classroom. Wherever you walk, you can see a building and try to understand how it was formed.

When I walked past this new construction in my neighbourhood back in New Zealand, I saw it built from the ground up and I was like, I want to have a building like that of my own, under my name one day. Just being able to walk past and say, that building was built by me."

- Michele Zhao, Bachelor of Architecture and Environments

"My brother is an architect, he works in China. I’m very close to my brothers and he inspired me when I was a young child. I always wanted to build a house in the future and live in it, that’s just one of the little dreams I’ve always had. After finishing my Bachelor degree in History and thinking about what I wanted to do in the future, I wanted to do something that would positively affect people’s lives, or have some influence on society. For the first time I argued with my parents and said, “I would like to study architecture”. So, I came here to start my new pathway."